Police in Vung Tau Detain, Assault Many Activists during Workshop on Civil
Society

Defend the Defenders

October 09, 2016

On
October 8, security forces in Vietnamís southern city of Vung Tau violently
detained around two dozens activists at a workshop on civil society,
interrogating them for hours before releasing them at midnight of the same day.
Among those detained were prominent dissident Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, legal expert
Le Cong Dinh, former prisoners of conscience Pham Ba Hai and Nguyen Thuy Quynh.

Police confiscated the detaineesí cell phones and destroyed them. Many
activists, including Le Cong Dinh and Nguyen Thuy Quynh, said they were brutally
beaten by police officers during interrogation and upon release.

The
Higher Peopleís Court in Ho Chi Minh City on October 5 reduced the four-year
sentence of well-known blogger Nguyen Dinh Ngoc (aka Nguyen Ngoc Gia) by one
year but kept the three-year period of house arrest that follows the
imprisonment. The well-known blogger was arrested in December 2014 on allegation
of conducting anti-state propaganda under Article 88 of the Penal Code. In late
March, he was sentenced to four years in prison and additional three years under
house arrest for posting articles criticizing the ruling communist party and its
government.

As
many as 54 foreign and domestic civil societies, including Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, Civil Rights Defenders and Defend the
Defenders issued a joint statement calling on Vietnamís parliament to further
revise its draft Law on Religion and Beliefs to conform with Vietnamís
obligations under international human rights law. The draft, which is expected
to be submitted to the parliament for approval soon, has a number of limitations
for people and religious groups to practice their faith.

On
October 7, Reporters
Without Borders (Reporters Sans FrontiŤres or RSF) issued a statement condemning
the Vietnamese governmentís policy of isolating
Vietnamese journalists and bloggers and its systematic reprisals against those
who dare to connect with the outside world. It cited the latest case on
September 26 in which security forces in Hanoi blocked Defend the Defendersís
Chief Executive Officer Vu Quoc Ngu from leaving to Paris where he was invited
to attend an international conference on press freedom.

Prominent prisoner of conscience Tran Huynh Duy Thuc is reportedly to conduct
hunger strike from October 5 to support people in the central coastal region
whose life is affected by the environmental disaster caused by the illegal
dumping of very toxic industrial waste of the Taiwanese Formosa steel plant in
the central province of Ha Tinh.